Trading Up Christmas

7.2 stars.

There are several feel good moments, emotional moments, times you almost wanna cry, but none of these fully deliver. This film elicits some emotional responses, but it doesn't quite get me to that place I wanna be. I feel the need sometimes for a wonderful tear or, heartfelt, romantic experience.

So this movie is sort of right in the middle of all the different categories. Is the cinematography great, not really. Is the acting great, it's OK. Is the music great, it's average. Is the story great, yes, I will give it that. But somehow they took a great story, and a great theme and cranked out a somewhat mixed final product.

Not quite sure what is missing, but usually that means lack of chemistry between the leads.

Trading Up Christmas is a movie about a sister who reads a story about a kid who, through trades, turned a rubber band into a house.

When her sister is forced to move several times, she decides to try to do the same to get her sister a house.

I really like Italia Ricci. The only other place Ive seen her was Catch Me if you Claus last year. That was a much better movie.

They have softened her look since then, and her character, Michelle, is sweet and sunny and warm-hearted.

Michael Xavier plays Dan, a journalist who is assigned her story and reluctantly follows her in her quest.

They really both turned in pretty good performances, but I'm not buying them as a couple.

I actually thought the movie got off to a pretty good, if unusual start, but things kinda fell apart about halfway through and stumbled to a standard Hallmark finish.

Meredith Forlenza as sister Kerri was a high point, and the supporting cast was generally good.

Not the greatest end result in the world, but I remain a fan of Italia Ricci. Hopefully they give her something better to do next year.

These writers took an exciting and interesting concept and made it blah, plus managed to break their own plot.

The concept for this film came from a real story many years ago where a guy started with a paper clip and wound up with a house. It was a pretty crummy little house, but still a house. He did it over the course of only fourteen trades taking a year.

Here a woman wants to start with a Christmas stocking and wind up with a house in ten days, by Christmas.

The story of the trades could have been exciting and memorable, but they aren't. I said they broke their own plot. How? After the second trade, a reporter covering the story actually starts deciding on the trades and surprising her with them.

The acting is blah, the dialogue has nothing with any real personality, and it takes a long time in story days between each trade.

Searh for the Wikipedia article "one red paperclip" to get the sequence of trades in the real story.

I review a lot of tv shows on IMDB, but this is the first review I've written of a Hallmark movie. Trading Up Christmas hit the sweet spot for me - a cute story, a little humour thrown in, decent acting, and not too many of the usual Hallmark Christmas tropes.

I really enjoyed the two leads in this film - Italia Ricci and Michael Xavier. They played off each other well and both came off as people you'd like to spend time with. Ricci, especially, was a breath of fresh of air, as I didn't recognize her from any other Hallmark movies I'd seen. She has a real effervescence that I found very charming.

The story is a little far-fetched at times and there are a couple of plot holes and head-scratchers along the way, but it ended up being a cute story with a nice resolution at the end. As a bonus, there were very few of the typical Hallmark Christmas boxes that got checked, so that was a nice bit of relief.

If you want to kill an hour-and-a-half with a fun, entertaining movie, Trading Up Christmas is worth the time.

I had reservations going into this movie because while the basic premise may have a real life precedent, I doubted that it could convince me. I was surprised that it didn't turn out to be a deal breaker. I was annoyed that the story included a plot device surrounding the reporter that is fairly common but way too predictable and totally unethical. I knew what would cause the climatic conflict almost from the start.

The acting is ok, but at times I thought the main actors weren't completely invested in their characters. Among other things, this meant that the chemistry between Italia Ricci and Michael Xavier was less than stellar.

There were a couple of trades that raised my eyebrows, but I think the writers intended that. The story created some additional interest when it started exploring the two sibling relationships.